


Sleep

by heroalba



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Gen, Lots of Angst, Tokyo Ghoul Exchange, tsukiyama is torso au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heroalba/pseuds/heroalba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He regretted everything. Everything he’d ever done- wasted, wasted potential.<br/>All for a fleeting taste, and… nothing, really.</p>
<p>Tsukiyama Shuu, the Gourmet ghoul, had earned absolutely nothing over his careful cultivation and preparation of his meal except yearning. And that awful feeling felt like it was going to consume him, everything, from the top of his head to the soles of his shoes.</p>
<p>Written for the Tokyo Ghoul Exchange for tumblr user dueliste!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep

 

 

He regretted everything. Everything he’d ever done- wasted, wasted potential.

All for a fleeting taste, and… nothing, really.

Tsukiyama Shuu, the Gourmet ghoul, had earned absolutely nothing over his careful cultivation and preparation of his meal except yearning. And that awful feeling felt like it was going to consume him, everything, from the top of his head to the soles of his shoes.

After leaving the rooftop, he’d heard; the CCG’s shinigami, their angel of death, had come to claim Kane-him. His name was still raw in his memories. Even thinking of his face rubbed salt into the invisible wound in his chest.

He knew better than to go looking for him, he knew better, but he just had to.  The pain in his chest wouldn’t allow him to go on not knowing.

He followed that oh-so-familiar scent down into the sewers, saw the blood-stained concrete there. He could almost tell what happened, if he tried hard enough. The smell of his blood was intoxicating yet it only made his stomach knot up, bile stinging the back of his throat.

He’d had to leave and wretch on the ground outside. He couldn’t imagine it, he couldn’t bear to even think of him laying there, helpless, without his hidden dagger to protect him.

He wished he’d never left the rooftop.

 

Chie was disappointed in him again. She looked like she’d have slung her bag to the floor if it didn’t hold her precious camera in it, and she instead set it gently down by the door as she removed her shoes.

“Shuu!” she snapped, and the man half-heartedly uncurled from his position, pushing his bedmate out beside him and listening to them hit the floor with only a sickening thud as a complaint.   
Chie gave him a disgusted look, pointing to the body in the floor. What remained of it, at least.

“You clean that up,” she growled, and he shrugged, flashing her a listless look. Her lips tightened into a thin, bloodless line before she sighed, shrugging off her jacket and being careful not to let it touch the blood seeping into the couch.

“You’re also buying me a new couch,” she said, exasperated, and he provided her with another shrug, looking forlornly at his bedmate, growing cold in the floor.

He’d done his best to wash all the blood off hi-her body, but some still leaked out from where her limbs were no longer attached. A little scar lightened the skin above one of her hips, but her scent remained purely human. Like they all were.

He kept thinking that if he had a substitute, maybe he’d stop hurting. He had Chie looking through hospital records, and she knew what he’d do to them, but she did it anyway. Some part of him bared his teeth in anger at the thought that she pitied him, and was just indulging him to keep him sated.

His stomach gurgled in dissatisfaction at the thought. He briefly considered taking another bite out of his partner, but thought against it as Chie shouted a reminder to clean up after himself from her kitchen.  Humans and their food. At least they, themselves, held some flavor.  
  
He sighed, sitting up further and barely wincing when he felt the drying blood on his skin cracking, letting him move and allowing his skin to breathe.

His eyes felt dry and itchy, the irritable sensation making him lift a hand to press the heel of his palm into one, to quell it. The blood on his hands stuck to his eyelashes and he blinked, hard, to get rid of the increasingly annoying feel of it.   
His stare focused on the headless torso in the floor, and that odd feeling rose in his throat again, nostalgia twisting in his guts like a writhing snake.

For a moment, he was back on the rooftop, and _he_ was looking right at him.

 

Kanae had called him again but he ignored the flashing message on his phone, adjusting the collar of his shirt. Lack of an appetite, along with zest for life, had rendered him unwilling to use the money his family had tucked away for him. Of course, he allowed Chie to dip into the funds for her silly frivolity (like that new couch she’d had him move into the apartment the other day). It was much easier than listening to her complain.  
She wanted him to get a job, said it would help him “move on” and get back to his old self. Tsukiyama thought she just secretly enjoyed his descent into becoming an ordinary plebeian, but she occasionally looked sincere when she griped at him so he supposed it couldn’t be helped.

It wasn’t all that hard to get a job as a taxi driver, and he’d always been good at pulling strings. Humans were so easy to manipulate and control, and it was almost amusing enough to make him forget for a little while. Almost.

Driving made it easier to catch his chosen prey, and to encounter new toys to play with should he have chosen to. Time passed more quickly as he grew accustomed to rolling out of his still-made bed and into the driver’s seat of his cab, blood warm on his tongue when he returned to his abode. Or, easier, Chie’s. He thought she’d appreciate the bit of thought he had for not getting caught, but instead all she wanted to do was complain that the bloodstains in her carpet would ensure another replacement and another dip into his funds.

It almost reminded him of Banjou’s pestering, and that almost made him smile a bit.   
Even though Banjou hadn't been his favorite being to be around, it was easy to say that their interactions were part of a fond memory now.

Chie said the driving helped him, but then she’d screech about how he’d ‘relapse’ every few months when he brought in two or three corpses instead of just one. He liked to ignore her for the most part and he liked to allow her to think he was getting ‘better’. Sometimes he even thought so himself, but then he’d slip and fall.

He’d found a long white hair on one of his suits that he hadn’t worn for a while and had to call in sick from work, pain burning in his chest just as intensely as when he’d first lost him. He’d clutched the suit close, back against the wall and pants getting dirty from his sitting on the floor, liked to think he could detect a tiny amount of his scent-

He scrambled through the pockets, fingers brushed a soft, frayed corner.   
He pulled out the bloodstained handkerchief he’d had for almost four years now and he knew it was useless but he pressed his nose to the fabric, eyes falling closed as he breathed in deeply. Even though the scent had faded to the point of being just the stale smell of salt, the action itself had his body wracked in pleasant shivers. He pretended he could smell him and his stomach twisted sharply in some sort of pained, hungry protest.

He needed to feed. Then he could perhaps confront this recurring problem and kill it at the root.

Tsukiyama’s mind was a mess. He’d left his keys in his room, couldn't go in his cab. So he’d walked, feeling his kakugan pulsing behind his eyes. Each time he thought he felt those black veins starting to stand out he ducked into an unknown corner, calming himself by smelling the petrichor heavy in the air from the clouds above him.

Thankfully he wasn’t near a place where humans normally commuted, so no one saw his internal struggle with the new-found hunger that gnawed away at his very being. He knew he wouldn’t find anything even remotely similar to what he wanted, but that was okay.

Tsukiyama Shuu was good at pretending.

His kakugan wrestled into check, he dared to edge into human territory, feeling almost immediately like he’d perhaps made a mistake as warm, alive bodies jostled around him, bumping into him and filling his nose with their scent.  
Somewhere in the back of his mind he clung to the fabricated smell of him he’d made for himself. All he had to do was grab someone, anyone really, he wasn’t picky anymore. At least, he tried to convince himself he wasn’t as he ruled out almost two-thirds of the population he stood amongst mentally.

Maybe Chie was right, and he had been getting better. He was only doing this to himself, he knew. He’d been clean, hadn’t thought of him since months and months ago… He might have just caused his own recovery effort to fail, seeing a white hair on his shirt. A single white hair that, if he thought about it, could have come from anywhere.

After all, he hadn’t seen Kaneki in almost three years.

It took him a moment to realize he’d formed his name in his mind and his entire being froze. He felt pressure against his back as someone ran into him, then heard curses as the unfortunate moved past him.

His chest throbbed painfully, and instead of his kakugan beating at his eyes it was hot, stinging tears.

He was back on the rooftop again and he couldn’t handle it.

Tsukiyama couldn’t breathe and he knew he was drawing attention to himself, so the moment he got enough air to move he ducked into the nearest shop he could. Naturally, the door had a bell and every patron inside turned to look at him as he felt his way to the bathroom, breathing hard and had it been raining?

When he looked in the mirror he could see salty tracks running down his cheeks, and moisture beading at the tips of his hair. It must have started raining while he was standing outside.

He heard an obnoxious voice outside the door as well as a knock, and he was tempted to snap back at whoever was interrupting him, but he called, in a slightly wavering voice, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He patted his shirt down, almost appalled to remember he was still in casual clothing. He had a bitter thought that the old him wouldn’t have allowed such a thing to happen, Chie’s voice a nagging part of his mind.   
He fixed his hair as well as he could, then wiped his face. He flushed the toilet for good effect, running the tap and splashing some water on his face. Clear his head maybe a little.

Then he opened the door, stepping out and to the side for a blond teenager to replace him. The boy looked like a punk, and gave him a grateful smile as he pushed past.

Tsukiyama absently, hesitantly, let the scent of the youth wash over his palette. He couldn’t keep being picky, and he was rather hungry….

But he stopped the minute he got even a small whiff. There was something unmistakable about that scent, and he felt his eyes trying to change. Trying to give away the sudden strong beating of his heart and the way his mouth started watering.

He had to get away from him or he’d bite.

The former Gourmet  went back into the shop, his nose suddenly assailed by similar scents to that boy. They were each unique, but they carried a bit of… A bit of him.

He took the chance, almost regretted it when he saw one of them holding a suitcase. He knew what that meant and his heart froze over for a moment. But he had to know, he smelled alive on them.

The one he talked to, an angry-looking black-haired teen, muttered something about… Something. Tsukiyama filed their faces away for later- he had to ask Chie something.

****  


If he said before that Chie had never come through for him, he was wrong and he wanted to take it back. She presented him with a ziplock bag, her mouth set in that annoyed yet endearing way. He could see fabric in the bag and his heart rate skyrocketed.

“Thank you, Chie,” he said, and she rolled her eyes. “Get back to work,” she called behind her as she got back in her car. Tsukiyama waved slightly, then turned on his heel and marched inside.

There was a strange pattern printed on the garments, he noticed as he pulled them out.  He absently wondered just why Chie had gotten him this article of clothing instead of anything else, but then promptly forgot about it. This wasn’t about whoever he was now, this was about making sure it was actually him.

He lifted the garment to his face, brought in a deep breath.   
His knees went weak.

He inhaled again, feeling like an addict getting his fix.

Hope blossomed in his chest and pooled in his stomach, hot and burning. His stomach growled, but his pupils were dilated with something other than hunger for flesh.

Kaneki Ken was alive.

And Tsukiyama Shuu was still wanting.


End file.
